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Nothing teaches you more about yourself like starting a business. Not only will you learn about how resilient you could be when pushed to the limit, you also learn about your strengths and weaknesses, how to work with people, and how to develop thick AF skin.
So it doesn’t come as a surprise to anyone that my favourite podcast is How I Built this by Guy Raz on NPR. I am not a fan of the sparkly connotation of a person hit by a stroke of genius that comes with the word “entrepreneur”, and this podcast exposes exactly the good ole unglamourous hard work and persistence that come with building successful businesses. Each episode on this podcast features an interview with a successful business founder. Guy Raz has interviewed the creators of some of the most impactful companies in the world, including Airbnb, Stripe, Eventbrite, Outdoor Voices, Zappos and more.
How I Built This is also going to be a book soon! In the book, Guy Raz is going to share stories and lessons learned from over 200 such interviews. It is available for pre-order now and I can’t wait to get my hands on it.
Since 2016 when the podcast launched, Guy Raz has also interviewed a selection of businesses with strong environmental and social missions, and I am always so inspired by their journey. You really don’t need to be interested in business or entrepreneurship to enjoy this podcast – the stories of overcoming setbacks and rising to challenges are always so entertaining to me. It’s kind of like adult storytime for me.
That being said, there are some incredibly inspiring lessons I have gained from listening to the stories of the world’s most (financially) successful impact business, including Impossible Foods, Allbirds, Dyson and more.
Here are the top 7.
1. Ask “what is the worst that could happen?”
Sarah Kauss, the founder of S’well, which produces temperature regulating, hip-looking reusable water bottles, had the idea for the company when she was on a hiking trip with her mother in Tucson, Arizona. It was a celebratory trip for her mom surviving breast cancer and being cancer free. Naturally with her mom having survived death, they had soul-searching conversations – you only have one life, what are you going to do with it? Sarah’s mom revealed to her that if she could have done it all over again, she would have been a painter. “What is it that you want to do?” her mother asked her. “Don’t wait for a health scare. Don’t wait till you get to my age to do what you want to do.”
Sarah has always been mindful of her impact on the environment growing up, so she had a reusable water bottle with her on this hike. But she was drinking warm water the whole time – and she thought to herself, wouldn’t it be nice if there is a bottle that keeps my drink cold? At the same time, she was reminded of a presentation a professor gave while she was at Harvard Business School. It was about how those who are affected by the water crisis are only going to be even more affected in the future. It is in this moment that everything came together for her. She decided to launch a company which creates a better water bottle while tying it to a social mission by working on plastics and climate change, and educating people about the water crisis.
She had US$30,000 in savings to work on S’well. Although risky, she soon quit her job in real estate to focus on developing this product, knowing at the back of her head that at the end of the day, she still has her Certified Public Accountant qualification and could always fall back on doing accounting for people if S’well failed. But with tactful strategies, getting help from friends and hard work, the rest became history. Today, S’well makes over $100 million each year, and Sarah still owns 100% of her business.
If you have been contemplating for a while now whether to take a risk, ask yourself “What’s the worst that could happen?” If the benefit of at least giving something a try and knowing is greater than the worst that could happen – bet on yourself and give it a shot.
2. People, even those close to you, might not understand your journey. Keep going nonetheless if you believe strongly in your path.
Let me expand on the above. People, even those close to you, might not understand your journey (or even be downright discouraging) especially when there are no results to show yet. Keep going nonetheless if you believe strongly in your path.
Tim Brown, the founder of Allbirds, which makes shoes out of renewable materials and is now valued at US$1.4 billion, recalls the humbling experiences at the beginning of the brand’s start. “I would find myself at dinners with friends who are [in their] early 30s, at the stage of their careers where things are starting to take off. We’d go around the table and I would dread when it would come to me and people would ask what I was doing. My buddy would curl up into a little ball and I would say ‘wool shoes’. And when we’d leave the dinner, people would pat me and say ‘That’s lovely that you are pursuing this little thing. Good luck with that, little fella’. It was awful.”
“When we’d leave the dinner, people would pat me and say ‘That’s lovely that you are pursuing this little thing. Good luck with that, little fella.’ – It was awful.”
– Tim Brown, Allbirds founder
Had he been discouraged by those words, I wouldn’t be wearing my favourite sneakers now and the company wouldn’t have made the impact it had today! I go into more detail about the company in my review of Allbird’s two most popular shoe styles.
Sarah from S’well also recalls a similar experience. She was at a business school classmate’s wedding and as she was explaining to a stranger what she was working on, when a good friend of hers felt the need to defend her “honour” by jumping in and saying: “but she used to have a really good job”.
It is always crystal clear in hindsight which company or who would succeed (“I knew she would make it!”), but when you are still at the beginning of a new journey, many people won’t be able to see the potential in what you are doing.
But that comes as no surprise – or else everyone would be doing it!
3. Have people around you who believe in you and support you
Which brings me to my next point – having people around you who believe in you. Starting a business, or taking big risks in life, is hard and there will be many doubters around. That is why you need people around you who you could lean on for support.
You don’t want people around you who are just idolizing you and saying yes to every idea or opinion you have, but you want people close to you who at their core, believe in your ability and could be the wind behind your sails during times when you doubt yourself.
When Raegan Moya-Jones from Aden + Anais, which makes natural muslin baby blankets, was feeling shaky after the fallout with her business partner, she confided in her husband about not being sure whether she could continue with the business. He asked her if she still believed in the business, and when she said yes, he convinced her to keep fighting for it and not to give up.
In Tatcha founder Vicky Tsai’s example, she used her and her husband’s savings to fund the start of her clean beauty business at the beginning. Her husband, who is also a great poker player, would win money from poker games to put into the business. People often only see founders in the spotlight at the helm of their business, but there is often always a huge support network around them at home or in the office.
Have people around you who have faith in you and could emotionally or even practically support you through thick and thin. This is true regardless of whether you are doing something risky honestly!
4. It is never too late to start something new
Patrick O. Brown, the founder of Impossible Foods, which makes burger patties that sizzle and bleed like real meat, started his company at nearly 60 years of age in the midst of a very successful career as a Biochemistry Professor at Stanford University. His company is now valued at US$4 billion.
Around 2008, Brown took a sabbatical and decided to identify the most important problem in the world that he could have an impact on. Rather quickly, he had zeroed in on what he said is unquestionably the biggest problem the world is facing – the catastrophic environmental impact caused by the use of animals in the food system.
He thought about doing something that would change public policy, but he decided what would be more effective is to create a product that could compete successfully in the marketplace against products produced by animal farming. Thus Impossible Foods was born.
Currently, as the product becomes more widely adopted by restaurants, retailers and most importantly, people, the company is valued at nearly US$4 billion.
Who says you must be a spring chicken to start a business or pursue something you believe in? In fact, starting this project at his ripe age freed him up to run his business exactly the way he believes he should, because he is already financially comfortable, has a stable family, and isn’t looking for a quick sell (Google tried to buy the business).
Don’t let age deter you from starting something you believe in!
5. Complain less and just deal with it.
At the time when Raegan Moya-Jones co-founded Aden and Anais to sell baby blankets, she had a full time job working in sales for The Economist, as well as three babies to take care of (with her husband). Between starting the company and quitting her Economist job in 2009, the company broke US$1 million in sales. She also still managed to go above target at her sales job and never let anyone know she was having a business on the side.
Honestly, I am getting stressed out just writing that all out.
But she made a point to avoid complaining about having to “doing it all”.
“It was really, really hard. But it was a conscious decision that I made. So when I got home from my ‘real job’, I was well in mommy mode and I focused on the girls. When the girls go to bed at 8:30pm I would start my day of working on Aden and Anais, and I would do that till 3:30am in the morning. Because it was a conscious decision on my part, I just never really complained about it. It was what it was.”
“Because it was a conscious decision on my part, I just never really complained about it. It was what it was.”
– Raegan Moya Joes, Aden + Anais Co-founder
And how inspiring is that! We don’t need to compare ourselves with exactly how much she works (she is a self-described insomniac and doesn’t need much sleep), but it is inspiring to see someone who sees the situation, her choices and the consequences as is and just gets on with it, instead of framing herself as a victim of her decisions.
With a little push by baby Prince George, who was swaddled in a blanket by the company at his first royal outing, Aden and Anais would eventually go on to sell more than US$100 million worth of blankets per year.
6. Good things take time
Dyson is now a household name one of the most successful home appliance brands the world. But at the beginning, it took founder Jack Dyson 5 years and 5,000 prototypes in his backyard shed before launching the first bagless vacuum cleaner into the market. This product is less wasteful and more efficient, with no bags going out to the landfill.
Similar trajectories could be seen in other companies: Patrick from Impossible Foods took more than 5 years of development before sharing the Impossible burger with the world; and the original Allbirds wool shoes were in development for 3 years before the brand was launched.
In conclusion: most good things take time. Lots of time.
It blows my mind to imagine all the inventions that are currently patiently in development around the world this second – inventions that might one day change our lives!
7. 1% inspiration. 99% perspiration.
The host of the podcast, Guy Raz, always asks his interviewees the same question at the end of each interview: “Do you think your success is because of luck, or hard work and persistence?”
They all give a variety of answers, and most say it’s mostly because of luck. I am pretty sure it is a combination of both, and I am also guessing a lot of them say luck because a) it’s kinda better for PR and b) they don’t think hard work plays a huge part because hard work comes naturally to them, so they don’t consider themselves particularly hard working.
But I strongly don’t believe any of these businesses would be where they are today if it’s not because of hard work. There are many people with great ideas, but how many of these people actually carry through with their ideas and execute on them?
The most striking example came from a recent episode with Vicky Tsai of clean beauty brand Tatcha. She had quit a prestigious corporate job and at the beginning of her business’s journey, she worked four jobs while supporting the start of her company. She and her husband were maxing out their credit cards as well and she remembered being pregnant and checking out groceries when her card was declined. She had to just leave the groceries on the checkout counter. It took 8 years of hard work later before Tatcha finally took off. In 2019, Unilever acquired the company for a reported $500 million.
It might seem irrational in a lot of people’s minds for her to continue on with her business when they were in such dire financial circumstances, which exactly highlights how much resilience it really takes to make one’s ideas come to life. Hard work might not guarantee success, but success won’t even be an option if there is no hard work.
So those are a few lessons from some of my favourite episodes on the podcast. But there are many more. Here is a list of businesses with positive social or environmental impact the podcast has featured. Do a search on whichever podcast app you use and give them a listen! (I might have missed some.)
Aden and Anais
Allbirds
Dyson
Eileen Fisher
Headspace
Impossible Foods
Laundress
Method
Tatcha
Toms
Rent the Runway
Supergoop
S’well
Whole Foods
If you like the podcast, consider also pre-ordering the How I Built This book, where Guy Raz shares stories and lessons learned from over 200 such interviews.
Hope you enjoy the podcast as much as I do and let me know your fav episodes!